Mortal and Divine
by SeventhSpanishAngel
Summary: Short one-shot prompted by a scene in the Long Howl. Stand alone muse fic.


Because in the end, she is a god and they are not, and she may love them and guide them, but they must face their own fears and slay their own demons, real and imagined

**Mortal and Divine**

**Disclaimers: **I own only the idea for this fic. All characters belong to the creatures of Okami.

**Spoilers: **Don't read if you haven't played Okami

**Warnings:** None, really. Pretty general

**Rating: **General

**A.N:** Those who have read The Long Howl may recognize the title to this one-shot. This grew out of that idea.

Because in the end, she is a god and they are not, and she may love them and guide them, but they must face their own fears and slay their own demons, real and imagined.

Orochi was not a God, nor was he a mortal beast, and she snarled defiance and flung him down from her plain. But he was wily and cruel and powerful, and he took her with him, and then they both stood on the mortal plain and _everything was different_.

Because she was not and never could be anything other than divine, and here in this place of change and death she did not fit. Eyes sidled away from her light, and reason took over imagination, and to mortal eyes she was nothing but a wolf.

Because he was not and never could be anything other than immortal, in the way that evil is, always changing shape but constant as the shadow of stars, and here in this place of change and death he did not fit. But people accept darkness because to live is to inevitably die, and they knew the beast not as eternal, just as they did not know the wolf as divine, but they knew darkness and loss and pain and Orochi was just another facet of life. They forgot too easily that to die is also to have lived, they forgot what created them with such terrible power and all-consuming love.

She wanted to destroy his taint, to free the village and let them live and love and grow. She wanted them to _be_. But this is the mortal plain and the rules are different and if they wanted to change the world they would have to do it themselves. She could give them the tools, but the only master of their lives was themselves.

They thought she was Orochi's familiar, her, who was light in its purest form…but she does not know betrayal because, in the end, she is divine and they are not. She loves, and loves endlessly, because she knows there is light everywhere and in everything, even when the world is ending and she is weak from her slumber and the despair of lives lived without faith.

She fights the fights that cannot truly be won because someone must, even if the battle only ever ends in eternal checkmate.

She has fought Yami a thousand thousand times, in the shadow of a thousand worlds, each as beloved as the last. And in the end Yami always looses, and just as inevitably begins his next plan, because he is eternal, the dark voice in every heart.

In the end Amaterasu always wins, no matter the cost, because light is life, and while there is life so there she is. And again they meet and again the heavens cloud, and again she lifts her voice and the sun rises once more.

And it does not matter to her that their faith can be fleeting, her power rising and falling, because in the end they are mortal and she is not.

And Nagi gets the credit when Orochi falls, his terrible hunger silenced, even when it is _her_ blood that stains the ground and _her_ strength that parted the clouds. Even when the world dims and all she can here is the Prophet's sorrowful song and stone overcomes flesh agonizingly, she still strives to see the heavens and her own light reflected benevolently on the fickle, beautiful, terrible world because that is what she is.

And when they know to love her she _burns_ and when they forget she still burns, and she _is_ even when she is stone.

And they are wary of the white wolf because she is a predator and their lives are often bloody and harsh, but she is also the defender, the mother watching over her wayward children. She watches her little Emissary's as they paint her form in a way they can understand, and again her strength surges with love and with faith and again she stands against the powers that would shroud her light and bring forth the terrible beauty of the void. She will fight as long as she is able and as long as there is something to defend, Okami Amaterasu, mother to them all…even when they forget her name and create other gods and other names, because she is the light and the light is _forever_, just as the dark is.

And she cannot fight all their battles and she cannot give them paradise, because that is not hers to give. They reshape their worlds in ways that fill her with joy and sometimes with sorrow, and that is their gift and their curse, to be masters of their own destinies.

She will watch over them and forgive them despite everything.

Because in the end, they are mortal and she is divine.


End file.
